Much to my surprise, in Saturday’s New York Times I found an editorial arguing that nuclear power is the safest and best alternative we have for global energy needs in the future, and that environmentalists should get on board and support nuclear power.
I’ll let you read the op-ed piece for yourself, but here are some choice cuts:
It’s increasingly clear that the biggest environmental threat we face is actually global warming, and that leads to a corollary: nuclear energy is green.
To put it another way, nuclear energy seems much safer than our dependency on coal, which kills more than 60 people every day.
This isn’t the first time nuclear power has been suggested as a solution to global warming.
Moreover, nuclear technology has become far safer over the years. The future may belong to pebble-bed reactors, a new design that promises to be both highly efficient and incapable of a meltdown.
Pebble-bed reactors have been used outside the U.S. for many years, and overall they have proven much safer. Opponents usually point to a 1986 accident in Germany where a pebble was jammed in a pipeline, and small amounts of radiation were released when workers tried to remove it. It doesn’t seem all that hard to design a pipe through which spherical objects can roll, but this experience shows that greater care must be taken when designing a pipe through which spherical radioactive objects will roll. IAEA is probably the best source for information on the safety of gas-cooled reactors.
Radioactive wastes are a challenge. But burdening future generations with nuclear wastes in deep shafts is probably more reasonable than burdening them with a warmer world in which Manhattan is submerged under 20 feet of water.
“I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy,” [James] Lovelock wrote last year, adding: “Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendents. … Only one immediately available source does not cause global warming, and that is nuclear energy.”
It’s clear that nuclear power has risks, but the risks are well-understood and can therefore be managed with proper reactor design and strict procedures. Coal has killed far more people than nuclear power ever has, and the risks which cause coal to be so deadly cannot be mitigated easily — or at all.
Disclaimer: I live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.
Video published by this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling+ license.
Bad Behavior has blocked 3419 access attempts in the last 7 days.
Facebook
Digg
del.icio.us
reddit.com
Newsvine
IGnatius T Foobar
Apr 18, 2005
Spot on.
There’s absolutely no question that we need nuclear power to bridge the gap between fossil fuels and renewables. I think we should round up all the moronic greenies who are trying to curb fossil fuel consumption and oppose nukes at the same time, and burn them as fuel. That would solve a lot of problems.
Disclaimer: I live less than 20 miles away from a nuclear power plant.
Royce Penstinger
May 15, 2007
Up front, I have you beat, as I live less than three miles from the antiquated and crumbling reactors owned by Entergy known as Indian Point, which are seeking to relicense said reactors for 20 more years.
The Homeland Security and State Department websites make it clear that this dangerous reactors are a target for terrorist, yet NRC and NEI (nuclear lobbyist) attempt to down play the incident, and assure us that the odds of a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility are almost nil, which is why they want to shelter us in place in our homes.
On that last point…the Centers for Disease Control study on sheltering in place states that shielding in the basement of a wood frame and/or brick home is only 40 percent…in short, 60 percent of the radioactivity can still find you. If you don’t have a basement, that shielding drops to ten percent.
If our government and the nuclear industry really believe nuclear is so safe, lets eliminate Price Anderson, and make nuclear insurance available too all home owners.
Porkie Penslinger
May 17, 2007
I chose to live exactly one mile from Indian Point, only after I had researched its danger versus lack of danger, and the odds of a large accident (once in ten billion years) seemed so remote, that I realized I had been spooked by a combination of hearsay, myth, and my own ignorance.
The odds of a small incident (once in ten thousand years) is slightly less than the odds of being struck by a meteor. And a small incident does not endanger anyone.
The hollow Price Anderson non-argument plays on ignorance also—– insurance rates are based on adding up the cost of previous incidents, dividing by the number of incidents, and adding a small profit margin, before writing the policy. Since America has had only one incident, in which nothing was damaged, not enough info exists to compute the rates. Nuclear power is too safe to insure.
The advice to shelter in place is an EPA technique, and one advised by the Witt report. The likelihood of ever needing to shelter in place is so remote, that anything else is delusional overkill. The requirement for organized evac plans was only put in place to avert disorganized squabbling by local/state/national officials during any event— it would be on paper beforehan, agreed to by all parties, so no grandstanding would occur.
Containment domes have been mathematically analyzed by prominent (and nuclear industry-independent) civil engineering firms to be immune to commercial airliner dives.The chance of any untoward occurrence is therefore so remote, that a constant focus on it bespeaks either a great ignorance, an emotional problem, a covert agenda, or all three, in combination.
May you be lucky enough to get over it soon, and be happy.
The rest of us need Indian Point’s cheap power.
Have a nice day.